Anthony Peratt, a researcher at Los Alamos National
Laboratory, has studied the evolution of these instabilities for
several decades. One evolutionary sequence is the development of the
“warped disk” form, which can involve many variations on the
underlying pattern. (See Thunderbolts of the Gods,
Chapter One, pages 21ff.) A continuous discharge channel will break
up into a string of spherical cells, usually 7 to 9 in number. These
cells contract further into toroids (donut-shaped rings) stacked
along the axial channel. The toroids flatten into disks, and then
the edges of the disks warp upward or downward. When viewed from the
side (perpendicular to the axis), the greater thickness of plasma
along the axis and in the plane of the disks appears as a glowing
line figure—a vertical line with cross bars.

Peratt described this sequence at an
interdisciplinary conference on plasma in the solar system in
September of 2000. David Talbott, another presenter at the
conference, remarked on the similarity of the line form to images
seen in ancient rock art. The pictograph on the left above, from
Kayenta, Arizona, illustrates a late stage in this sequence. Peratt
remarked that the detailed correspondence with the laboratory
discharge sequence is precise. This Kayenta image was, in fact, the
first pictograph that Talbott sent to Peratt, and it inspired Peratt
to investigate the correspondence further. (The identification of
the discharge components comes from Peratt’s later paper on the
subject. According to Peratt, the configuration is about to undergo
an intensely energetic transformation that could be deadly for
humans exposed to its radiation.)

In the transitional phase, the top disks fold over
each other to form a bulb shape; the next disk bends into a cup
shape; the middle disks often merge; and the lower disk bends down
into the shape of an inverted cup. The bottom of the axial current
often develops a trident shape. When viewed from the side, the line
figure takes on the appearance of a squatting stick person with his
arms in the air. The central toroid appears as two dots or, if
bright enough, as a bar under the “stick man’s” arms. The
trifurcated bottom end of the axial current is commonly interpreted
in rock-art lore as the “stick man’s” genitalia. Peratt calls this a
“basic” form taken by discharge instabilities, and significantly it
is an image common to rock art around the world. (See image on the
right.)

Peratt’s investigation of rock art led him to
collect hundreds of thousands of digital photographs of petroglyphs
(images scratched or pecked into rock) and pictographs (images
painted on rock). He has classified them into 84 categories that
correspond with the quasi-stable forms of the laboratory plasma
discharges.

“Many petroglyphs, apparently recorded several
millennia ago, have a plasma discharge or instability counterpart,
some on a one-to-one or overlay basis. More striking is that the
images recorded on rock are the only images found in extreme energy
density experiments; no other morphology types or patterns are
observed,”
Peratt writes,
“The inward rise on axis along with the upward folding of the outer
edges of the carved lines and transition to edge curling, a
phenomena [sic] recorded in intense electrical discharge
radiographs, could not have been known to prehistoric man unless he
witnessed the same event in the sky.”

Peratt and his assistants and collaborators also
recorded the fields of view of the ancient artists and the locations
of the images with GPS instruments. By plotting this data on
computerized topographical maps, he can calculate where the various
forms occurred in the Earth’s ancient plasmasphere (what astronomers
call the magnetosphere).

Peratt surmised that a surge of power in the
currents driving the auroras had set off the sequence ofinstabilities.
The entire pre-historical sky around the globe would have appeared
to come alive with a shimmering, shining “enhanced aurora” that
stretched from pole to pole. It would have featured exactly those
abstract figures and stick men and strange animal-like shapes that
appear only in rock art and in high-energy plasma discharges. He
contends that the ancient artists were witnesses to this “enhanced
aurora” and that they recorded what they saw on the most durable “recording
device”
available—rock surfaces.

From the difference in scale between a laboratory spark and an auroral
discharge, Peratt estimates that the ancient displays would have
lasted “for at least a few centuries if not millennia.” Radiocarbon
dating of material overlying some buried petroglyphs provides a time
for the occurrence of the displays at 4 000 to 12 000 years ago.

The curious
phenomena that
our space-age sensors are detecting in space, phenomena that can be
explained directly in terms of the electrical behavior of plasma,
are now reflected in the forms of ancient rock art. The new universe
of plasma requires not only a new vision of the present but also a
new vision of the ancient past. Discoveries in space, ancient
drawings of the sky, and controlled laboratory experiments converge
to revolutionize our understanding of the cosmos. Plasma and
electricity make possible a unified perspective, a goal that is
fundamental to the scientific quest.